


Tidedancer

by KestrelGirl



Category: Guild Wars 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Certified Babey, Deaf Character, Disabled Character, Feels, Gen, Illustrations, Minor Violence, Nonbinary Character, Sylvari (Guild Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:19:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21755143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KestrelGirl/pseuds/KestrelGirl
Summary: Dubhán spent an eventful first day out of the Dream. Born for the water, and never quite suited to land; how will this little sapling fare in life?
Comments: 5
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

Dubhán awoke in a world that felt dry and unfamiliar. They’d spent their entire existence - of a sort - submerged. It took them several seconds to adjust to leaving the water in their pod and the ocean of the Dream, before they realized that it wasn’t just the waves that had gone still.

They couldn’t hear anything at all.

An older male sylvari with orange eyes, pale brown bark, and a beard of roots stood over Dubhán as they sat up. They knew instinctively that he was one of their kin. His lips moved rapidly; he seemed to be talking excitedly. But all Dubhán could do was tilt their head in confusion. 

It seemed like an eternity to Dubhán before the man realized his mistake. He paused, and his lips formed an O. He knelt down and traced words in the soft earth. 

“NAME?”

Dubhán motioned as if to sweep the dirt, erasing the question. The man nodded, and Dubhán brushed the word away with their hand so they could write their name.   
“DUBHAN”

Dubhán silently thanked the Pale Mother for their ability to read and write. They hadn’t expected to be… like this.

The man pointed to himself, then erased Dubhán’s name to replace it with his own.

“SERIMON”

Serimon pointed to his ears, as if to call attention to something. Dubhán mimicked this, only to find something entirely different where they supposed their ears should be. Serimon gestured for Dubhán to turn their head to one side. His mouth opened in surprise again. He sat down, and traced words once more.

“GILLS? LIKE FISH?”

“MAYBE?” responded Dubhán before clearing the makeshift drawing board. Serimon marveled at the curious little structures on the side of the sapling’s head. Some sylvari had ears that looked similar, like little flower buds. But Dubhán’s rippled, revealing veins within. These were most certainly not ears. And there was something a bit off with Dubhán’s handprints that Serimon noticed as they swept away their writing.

“YOUR FINGERS - WEBBED?”

Dubhán stretched their hands. A leaf-thin layer of tissue connected their fingers, apart from their thumb. Serimon erased his observation.

“TOES TOO”

Dubhán looked down at their feet, then looked at Serimon’s. Why, yes - their own toes were much more splayed than the average sylvari’s, and connected by the same thin membrane.

“& FEEL YOUR BACK” 

Dubhán reached over their shoulder, and felt a pair of sturdy leaves that had sprouted from each of their shoulder blades. Serimon pointed out two more pairs, located lower on Dubhán’s spine. Dubhán flexed their back muscles, and the leaves moved. This would seem strange to most sylvari, but to Dubhán it was a familiar feeling - albeit one they’d only felt underwater.

Serimon continued.   
“SEEN THIS BEFORE” - “WEBS, NO NOSE, BIG EYES… FINS” - “FULL POD - DREAMED OF WATER?””

“YES,” replied Dubhán.

“...BUT ALWAYS WITH EARS”

Dubhán hung their head in shame. What had they done to deserve being this… different?

“NO - GOOD FOR YOU.” - “THEY USE DEVICES TO BREATHE.” - “AND WATER IN EARS…” Serimon drew a sad face.

Dubhán lifted their head up at the sight and laughed, a coarse laugh that sounded quite odd to all the hearing folk nearby. Not that Dubhán cared; laughter was something new and exciting for them. An amused Serimon joined in, then paused to write more.

“GO TO WATER? LEARN BETTER THERE?”

Dubhán didn’t respond. They paused, stood up slowly, and surveyed the Grove around them. There was a ledge a short distance to their left, past a group of crafters and traders. 

They began to take their first steps on their webbed feet, with a rolling and awkward gait. Serimon followed, confused and worried. When Dubhán reached the ledge, they stepped over the short barrier of vines at the edge. They looked over their shoulder to see Serimon even more shocked than he’d been before, with his hands over his mouth. 

Dubhán crouched down, like a frog. They’d done this a hundred times in the Dream. They couldn’t hear Serimon reflexively scream “Wait, not yet!” as they jumped, diving from the fifty-foot cliff into the peaceful, twilit waters of the Sea of Sorrows below.

Not that they wanted to hear it.

They were home.


	2. Nightmares Come When Shadows Roam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What others take for weaknesses make us best where we thrive. Dubhán rapidly adapts to the surroundings they were born for - but possibly at their peril.

The nightmares began not long after Dubhán left. They dreamed they were a fish, flopping and helpless on land as a krait prepared to make them its next snack. But when they woke up, they could still walk and run, if they had to. _What is the meaning of this?_

They surfaced frequently in those first few weeks, as if to try to tell the rest of the world they were okay. Farmers on Sandycove Beach; the Soundless on the Weeping Isle; the Lionguard in the north of Quetzal Bay. After a month, though, trying to interact as a deaf, nigh-mute sylvari in a talking world became tiresome. So much so that they simply left, just as they had left the Grove, without even a written goodbye.

Dubhán was only five weeks old when they pushed across the strait to Southsun, startling a Consortium patrol on the west coast as they surfaced. They looked down at themselves, and realized that the petals on their waist were growing longer. _Fancy,_ they thought.

After one too many close encounters with massive karka and bloodthirsty reef skelk, they pushed onward, into the Sea of Sorrows. There were still dangers, of course, but at least these were familiar. **  
**

It took Dubhán two harrowing months to reach the Splintered Coast. They hopped from island to barren island, and it seemed harder and harder to adapt to land again each time they went ashore. With their mind taken up by the goal of surviving the journey, they simply did not have time to notice _why_ until they finally arrived.

Dubhán pressed their jet-black hands against the ground, trying to prop themselves up on one knee and stand up. They hadn’t done that in so long…

…and now they couldn’t. 

Dubhán’s entire lower body was a limp, spastic weight, covered in an unruly mass of leaves and petals, all turquoise and ebony and pale pink. Their legs had grown into each other beneath the foliage, then merged with it; the entire mass moved as one. Their heartwood, as close as sylvari can get to bone, had seemingly dissolved, leaving this appendage muscular but not sturdy whatsoever. It served much better as a paddle underwater.

Their feet, at least, were still there beneath, but they were atrophied and refused to lie flat. Dubhán was torn between elation that their body had grown so curiously to match their purpose, and sheer despair in the realization that they were no longer meant to walk the land as easily as they swam the seas.

It took what felt like an hour before they finally managed to get their… their tail to work in a way that made it so that they could at least stand. They took a few shuffling, wobbling hops forward -

\- and then felt a sharp pain in their shoulder. If they could hear, they would have heard the hissing behind them, and been able to react before being hit by a harpoon. A krait gripped them and spun them around, and they fell right back onto the sand. **  
**

Dubhán’s tail spasmed, flinging them toward the water. They gave in. That had been the only way to end the nightmare they’d had their entire life without waking up in terror, throat hoarse from… screaming, apparently? Was that how screaming felt? _Pale Mother, I’m ready. Just let me come home._

Another jerk, and suddenly, Dubhán was underwater again. _Home. Take me home. This isn’t home -_

A torrent of water forced its way through their hands, their mouth, their gills. A tidal surge rocked the calm bay shore, catching even the amphibious krait off guard, and then a matching wave of exhaustion washed over Dubhán. It took all their energy to dive down and find a patch of kelp, far from the krait deeps. **  
**

Finally, a safe place to rest. They hadn’t done that in a long time.

For the first time in Dubhán’s entire life, the nightmare that had plagued them was gone.

Perhaps, after all, this _was_ still home.


End file.
